And the sadness of experience (for we cannot live long in this world without discovering that life is exquisitely sad)--the sadness which comes with experience--is _this_ also a gain? No doubt it is--no doubt it is. A wise man once told us that sorrow is better than laughter; that the house of mourning is better than the house of feasting. And a Greater than Solomon endorsed with His lips and with His life the declaration, “Blessed are they that mourn.” And who that regards life in its true aspect, but must bow a grave assent to this verdict? He who watches the effect on himself of God’s teaching, and of the lessons which He sets to be learnt, will understand what the Master means by His saying. He who regards his own life as something more than a bee’s life, or a butterfly’s life; he who sees that the life of man has its _schooling_, meant to raise it above our natural meannesses, and petulances, and impulses, and weaknesses, and selfishnesses, and ungenerousness--into something high and noble and stedfast, exalted, sublime, angelic, godlike; he who thus thinks of life, and watches life with this idea ever in view,--will find it not hard in time to thank God for having made him sad, even while the sadness is fresh and new and keen in his subdued and wounded heart. Disappointed in many things, and with many people, he will accept the disappointment with a quiet, anguished, thankful heart, feeling that God, who tore from him his prop, is raising the trailing vine from the ground, and instructing its tendrils to twine around Himself, the only support that can never fail them. And this is well, he knows, who is a watcher of life, and a learner of its lessons. And when sadness has produced this, its right and intended effect of sweetening, and not souring the soul, a fresh advantage and gain steals, starlike, into the darkened sky. The heart that has been made lonely, except for God’s then most nearly felt presence, in a sorrow, is that which is the most braced and disentangled for the great and noble deeds of life. With a sad and a disappointed, if _yet still a loving, tender_ heart, we can go out on God’s work, go out to face evil, or to do good, more easily and thoroughly oftentimes, than when this great grave, the world, shows to us “its sunny side.” Sadness, to him who humbly and prayerfully is seeking to learn God’s lesson in life, has not a weakening, but a tonic power. God, who sends the sadness, sends also the health and the strength; yea, the strength arises from the sadness. Something of what I mean is grandly expressed in the following extract:--